


The Devil and Mr. Potter

by Jellyfax



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Attempted Murder, Companionable Snark, Depressed Harry, Draco Malfoy Needs a Hug, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Harry Potter Needs a Hug, Hermione Granger is a Good Friend, Kreacher is a Bastard Cat AU, M/M, Mythology Mash-Up, Mythology References, References to Depression, Road Trips, Ron Weasley is a Good Friend, Sassy Draco Malfoy, Sassy Harry Potter, Snark, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2019-12-25 23:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18271589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellyfax/pseuds/Jellyfax
Summary: Harry Potter lives a fairly ordinary, if dull, existence. Ordinary, at least, until a demon appears in his office to make good on a deal with the Devil. The collateral? Harry's soul, of course.A Demon-AU that plays fast and loose with almost every mythology I could get my grubby little hands on.There is some violence, some mentions of depression and suicide (but only mentions!), a lot of snark, a lot of friendship, some breaking, some healing, and of course, some romance.Oh, and Kreacher is Harry's bastard cat.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present for the effervescent light of my life Megan, you wonderful, beautiful bastard! No one else is willing to put up with my very niche Beowulf memes, Rainbow Rowell quotes, and general coffee addiction like you. I hope you enjoy your belated Christmas, and barely-on-time birthday present fic! 
> 
> Also thanks to Rebecca who guilted me into finishing things by crying at me in Swiss German (it's so soft!) and let me invade her kitchen to watch Yuri on Ice while I wrote this. お茶を飲みすぎるかメロンパンを作ろうとしすぎることができないね!
> 
> Tags may change as the fic updates, but most of the fic is finished, so (if my uni deadlines are kind) this should be fully uploaded in a month or two!

For all intents and purposes, Harry Potter was a very ordinary man. He was tall, but not exceptionally so, nor was he exceptionally handsome. He was skinny, with a thin face, a mess of black hair, and his mother’s green eyes, the only trait he seemed to have inherited from her. Not that he knew much about his parents other than that they died at a horribly young age and left their one year old - with his mother’s eyes and his father’s face - with his sole remaining, and sadly disdainful, relatives. The only notable feature on his otherwise ordinary face, was the jagged scar running like web of cracked pottery from his hairline in a sharp diagonal down his face. As a child he had fancied that it looked rather like a bolt of forked lightning, though the mundanity of life had transformed the dashing lightning bolt of his childhood to the distinctly adult realities of a chipped mug. He’d received ten GCSEs at mostly B grades, he’d even managed two Cs and a B at A-level, and most of his teachers considered him to be a bright and intelligent boy, but he’d never been a particularly diligent student. He’d left school at eighteen and got a job at the bank, which was how he found himself behind a very ordinary desk of a very ordinary branch of a very ordinary bank in Islington.

It was in this bank that, for the first time since he was a baby, something out of the ordinary happened. He was filling out some paperwork for a poor old woman whose pension was struggling to cover the remainder of her mortgage when he became aware of someone else in the room. He looked up, expecting a small woman with sad eyes. Instead, stood in front of him was a man, of a height with himself, with skin like spoiled milk, and a shock of white blonde hair coiffed just-so. Everything about him was sharp, from the jut of his chin and the line of his mouth, to his long, fine fingers adorned with dangerous-looking rings. His suit looked like it cost more than Harry earned in a month, and he seemed to be wearing some kind of cloak, a very dark green that made him look, if possible, even sharper and paler.

“You aren’t Mrs. Reed.” Harry said dumbly. The man seemingly ignored him, but sat down on the pleather chair in front of the desk all the same. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to collect on your deal.” The man said, disinterestedly.

“My deal?” Harry echoed.

The man finally looked up, something serpentine uncoiling in his cold, grey eyes. “Your soul, for whatever riches and fame you desired at the time.” He paused to look him up and down. “Or, apparently, the lack of riches and abundance of bad fashion sense you received.”

Harry looked down at his forty quid C&A suit that he was fairly sure he’d only bought because it was on sale, and couldn’t find it in him to be offended. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “Did you say my ‘soul’?”

The man raised a slender brow. “Yes. Is your hearing as bad as your eyesight?”

Harry balked, adjusting his glasses self-consciously. “Are you barmy? Is there someone I can call for you?”

The man continued to look bored as he extracted a small, black, leather-bound notepad from his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Harry Potter, aged twenty-five, orphaned at one and a half, raised by relatives, works in a boring office for a bank whose name doesn’t matter, lives at 12 Grimmauld Place, Islington, London, The United Kingdom, Earth. Is that not you?”

Harry paused, stunned. “Yes, but- how do you know that? Have you got into my bank details?”

“You keep ‘orphaned at one and a half’ in your bank details? That has to be the saddest security question I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Of course.” The man replied, clearly unconvinced. “I need you to sign a few things, then you’ll be coming with me.”

“I’m not signing anything, and I’m not going anywhere.” Harry protested. “It’s a Tuesday, and it’s 11:30 in the morning. I’m supposed to be in a meeting with Mrs. Reed about defaulting on her payments last month.”

“Great confidentiality there, Mr. Potter, you really must be the best and brightest of your profession.” The man replied dryly. “But I’m sure they’ll manage without your brilliance.”

“Look,” Harry said, growing increasingly irate. “If you’re peddling some religious bullshit, I’m not interested. I don’t believe in homeopathy or scientology, I’ve never been baptised and I don’t believe in God, so unless you’d like a quote on a mortgage, get out of my office!”

The man rolled his eyes and flipped a page of his notebook disinterestedly. “Of course you’ve never been baptised, I have it down here as Jatakarma and Namakarana, though the name isn’t much of a giveaway on that front.”

Harry finally snapped and slammed his hand down on the table. The man’s small and all but imperceptible flinch was almost worth it. “Get out!”

The man frowned and glanced at his watch. “It’s a good thing I have other things to do today.” When he stood up the chair gave an undignified squeak. “I’ll be back, Potter.”

With that the man melted into fine smoke before disappearing entirely right in front of Harry’s eyes. He stood in stunned silence for a moment before the door burst open, and a decidedly distressed woman rushed in.

“Hermione?”

“Harry? We heard raised voices, are you alright?” Hermione said looking around the room for some sign of a scuffle, before cocking her head at him questioningly.

Harry, still staring at the spot where the man had been standing only moments ago, nodded shakily in reply.

“Are you sure?”

Eyes snapping back to Hermione he nodded again more firmly. “Uh, yeah. Just had a bad … phone call.”

Hermione glanced at the phone, then back at Harry before nodding in return. “Okay. Just let me know if it’s anything HR should know about.”

“Will do, ‘Mione. Thanks though.”

With a wary smile, she smoothed back a small mass of errant curls that had escaped their kirby grip confines in her alarm and neatened her blouse before turning to leave, but paused as she reached the doorway. “Oh, Ron wanted to know if you were still coming to dinner Friday night?”

“Yeah, should be.” Harry replied, scratching the back of his neck. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do, except possibly be mauled by his absent godfather’s horrible cat.

Hermione’s smile brightened and she left him to his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Reed did eventually turn up, she had been waylaid by a mysterious stranger who had wanted to talk to her for a very long time about what had made her happy that morning, yet somehow it had turned into a conversation about God and morality, and before she knew it she had been stood there talking to the pale gentleman for an hour and a half. Harry tried as best he could not to think about how much of a coincidence it was that he too had been having an odd conversation with a pale gentleman not ten minutes after Mrs. Reed had discovered how very late she was going to be for her appointment. In fact, he tried not to think about that gentlemen so much that all he did for the rest of the day was think about the feeling of his cold, calculating eyes, and the way it seemed that his menacing grin was the last thing still floating in the air as the rest of him had dissipated into nothingness. Even his walk home was consumed by the unnerving feeling that he was being watched. He fumbled with the key in the large, Edwardian front door, and all but slammed the door shut behind him, putting the door on the latch as he did so.

Harry had moved out of his Aunt and Uncle’s the day he turned eighteen. His estranged godfather had died when he was fifteen and left him his family’s Islington flat. He’d only met the man once or twice, he’d been to prison and Aunt Petunia wouldn’t have him within ten feet of Privet Drive, so he had met with the strange man in a park at night which, in hindsight, was a stupidly dangerous thing to do, but Sirius had been warm and affectionate with Harry in a way his blood family never had been, so it was worth the near-death experience for that alone. They had exchanged letters for a couple of years, but after a period of silence he’d received a different letter from his godfather's solicitor informing him of his death, and of Harry’s future inheritance. When he first moved out he had been thrilled to have his own place in London-proper, but his excitement turned to contempt the moment he stepped into the place. It was old and disused, probably not lived in for as long as Harry had been alive. It was damp and smelled distinctly of cat urine. He had spent a lot of the money his parents had left him - which was more than most twenty-somethings could leave a child, though Harry was certain most of it had come from his late grandparents - to fix up the place, but it still never really felt like home.

As he hung up his coat by the door, he heard a strangled yowl from the kitchen and sighed. He trudged over to see an angry ball of scraggly hair hissing at him from under the kitchen table.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll feed you in a minute.” He grumbled at the cat as he pulled the tin of food from the fridge. “I don’t know why I bother, you’ll be dead in a week if I’m lucky.”

The cat hissed again and backed away further under the table at the clatter of the food bowl on the counter. Kreacher, as his collar informed Harry when he first sunk his claws into his arm seven years ago, unfortunately, came with the place. Harry had tried to donate him to a shelter when he’d first discovered the source of the cat piss aroma, but the sodding thing made its way back the next day, hissing and scratching when Harry tried to come near to kick him out again.

Harry dropped the bowl of fishy mush as close to the cat as he dared and made his way back to the living room, collapsing onto the nearest sofa. It had been a strange day to say the least. There was a significant part of him that was convinced the whole thing had been some boredom-induced hallucination. Perhaps his childhood trauma was finally manifesting itself in the form of a demonic tax collector who dressed like some kind of Eton schoolboy.

“Prick.” he said out loud.

“Rude.” Came a reply.

Harry all but fell off the sofa, looking up to see the man from before lounging casually in the armchair next to him.

“You!” Harry cried. “I’m actually going mad. Fully and completely mad.”

The man sighed. “No, Potter, you’re not mad, just in debt.”

“How did you even get in?”

Kreacher, intrigued by the commotion, made his way warily over to the armchair, sniffed the man twice, then promptly began to purr, rubbing his matted body against a very expensive trouser leg.

Harry balked. “Traitor!”

The man smirked, despite the hair now adorning his suit. “The cat has good taste, Potter, what can I say?”

“You still haven’t answered my question. How did you get into my house?”

The man sighed and crossed one leg over the other leisurely. “I teleported, like I did in and out of your office this morning. One of the perks of the job; I don’t have to deal with public transport.”

The smile he shot Harry was lazy and cruel, and it made him very uncomfortable.

“So you’re the Devil, then?” Harry asked slowly.

The man laughed sharply, making Kreacher jump with alarm and run, hissing under the coffee table. “Me? The Devil? You think that the reigning Lord of Light would come to collect your pathetic soul himself?”

“Lord of Light?”

Rolling his eyes the man began to count on his fingers flamboyantly. “Lucifer, Iblis, Mara, Erlik, Kölski, Ahriman, Woland, Mephistopheles, The Old Serpent, The Stranger, call him what you will, you know who I mean.”

Harry frowned. “You expect me to believe that you’re the actual Devil?”

The man sneered in return. “Did you listen to a word I just said? Are you dense? Is my sarcasm too subtle for you? No, I am not the Devil himself, the Lord does not care about you enough to come himself.”

“So you’re just a lackey.” Harry replied, decidedly unimpressed.

The man - demon, Harry supposed - hissed furiously, his face darkening, smoke beginning to curl out from between his teeth menacingly. “Listen here, you insufferable creature, you vile worm, you insignificant piece of dirt! I am a demon of the highest degree, my pedigree is impeccable, I am more powerful than you could possibly imagine, and I’m here to collect your soul. There is nothing you can do about it.”

“Put your forked tongue away, you’re not that scary.” Harry said with more confidence than he was really feeling. “You’re barely six feet tall. It looks like a small breeze would blow you over. You look like you might expire any minute.”

“What does it matter how tall I am?” The demon said incredulously, his face returning to its human visage. “I’m taller than you! Besides, a demon comes to collect your soul and you’re sassing him? You’re sassing the demon?”

“Well, Mr. ‘ _I know where you live and all about your dead parents_ ’, if that surprises you then you really don’t know me very well at all, do you?”

“I’m not here to be your friend, Potter, I’m here to collect your debt. You work in a bank, surely that should be familiar to you.”

“I never sold my soul.” Harry replied through gritted teeth, ignoring the barb, “I never made a pact with the devil or any of his lackeys.” He looked pointedly at the demon who bristled in way not dissimilar to the cat still curled up under the table. “So piss off and find someone else to bother.”

The demon hissed again. “He sent me himself, you know. He doesn’t make mistakes, so you’re going to sign these papers and you’re going to come with me before I have to drag you there myself!”

Harry raised a brow. “I thought you said that I wasn’t important enough for the Devil himself to be interested?”

“I said that you weren’t _important_ enough for him to _come here_ himself. Your hearing really is as bad as your eyesight.”

Having had quite enough, Harry leant back on the sofa and waved the demon away ineffectually. “I don’t care. I didn’t sell my soul. Go and double-check if you don’t believe me.”

The demon’s eyes narrowed as he dissipated, leaving Harry alone again. Kreacher mewled from under the table and Harry glared back at him. “Fat lot of good you did. Purr for the demon, why don’t you, you useless mog.”

This time the demon reappeared in the chair with a crack like a cherry bomb, and a smug look adorning his features. “You were right about not selling your soul, but someone else did it for you, so it doesn’t matter much either way.”

“Who sold my soul for me?” Harry cried in alarm. “When? Why?”

The demon smirked and tapped the side of his sharp nose. “That’s under client confidentiality I’m afraid. Unlike you, Potter, I wasn’t raised in a barn and know how confidentiality works. It’s all about professionalism in this job.”

“Job? Do you get paid for this? What, did you go to uni? Study ‘ _soul collecting 101_ ’? Professionalism, my arse! You’re a bloody loan shark at best!”

“Are you sassing me again?” The demon asked incredulously.

“No, I’m offering you tea and biscuits before you drag my soul to Hell for all eternity.” Harry said, his voice rising to a panicked pitch. “Yes, I’m sassing you! I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that, firstly, demons exist, and secondly, one of them is currently sat in my living room because someone else sold my soul to the Devil!”

The demon was silent for a moment, somewhat taken aback by this outburst, before smirking and removing a roll of parchment from the inside of his ridiculous cloak. “Well bully for you, Potter, but I don’t have time for your hysterics. I just need you to sign this, then it’ll all be over. For me, at least.”

Harry was about to reach out and take the parchment from him when he paused. “Wait, if my soul is already sold, why do I have to sign something?”

The demon suddenly seemed a lot less smug than he had done only seconds before. “You didn’t sign the original contract, and you’re not dead yet.” He said between clenched teeth. "He wants your soul now, so signing the contract over to you is the easiest way of going about things.”

“What if I don’t sign it?” Harry said, folding his arms across his chest.

The demon frowned. “You have to sign it.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You can’t make me.”

“Yes I bloody can!”

“I have free will, and surely a contract forcibly signed isn’t valid? Or doesn’t your professionalism stretch that far?”

Smoke began to curl lazily from the corner’s of the demon’s mouth again as the parchment in his fist began to crumple. “You are going to come with me whether you like it or not, Potter!”

“Well, if you need me to sign something of my own free will, something that I refuse to sign, then I think you’ll find that I won’t, actually.”

The demon’s eyes flared angrily with brilliant silver flames, and the hiss that emanated from him sounded distinctly reptilian. “You’re going to regret this, Potter!”

With that he disappeared again and Harry was left not quite sure whether or not he could count that as a win, or even if any of that had been real. He staggered up to the bathroom to take his temperature, but when the thermometer showed a healthy thirty-five degrees, and a quick inspection of his tongue and eyes in the mirror showed no signs of coating, infection, or jaundice, he sat down heavily on the closed toilet lid.

 

* * *

  
The next morning Harry tried his best to put the recent strangeness out of his mind, putting on one of his many plain suits, in one of the many dark, muted colours he owned. It wasn’t fashionable, he’d never been fashionable, but then when you grew up wearing your much-larger cousin’s grotty hand-me-downs a selection of suits from the high street was a pretty big step up in itself. He looked at his reflection as he tied his tie as neatly as possible, noticing the dark circles under his eyes, and sighed. Not exactly a pretty sight, but no one who came into his office really cared how he looked, which was part of the problem, Harry supposed. He glanced at his watch and swore, grabbing his rucksack from the bed and jumping over an irate Kreacher who hissed at Harry as he slammed the door behind him.

The bank was a twenty minute walk from Grimmauld Place if you were to take your time, but somehow Harry always managed to leave late enough to have to rush. He did an awkward half-jog past several bus-stops worth of people, none of whom paid him any mind, but as he slowed to a walk, catching his breath, he felt a strange prickling on the back of his neck, as though someone were watching him. He paused to look back, but the people around him had their eyes fixed on their phone screens and on the pavement at their feet as they too hurried to jobs they were undoubtedly as late for as Harry was.

Shaking his head, Harry continued on down the street, crossing the road by an old phone repair shop, making sure to look both ways before stepping out. But as his foot left the pavement Harry felt the ground fall away beneath him, a swooping darkness filling his vision as he lurched forwards. He tried to catch himself, his hands reaching out for ground that simply wasn’t there, met instead with a sickening lurch as he tumbled further into the darkness. This couldn’t be happening, reality didn’t simple crumble away to nothing. He was having a stroke, perhaps, or a fit of some kind, and he had to snap out of it. In the distance he heard a rumble of something large, growing louder and louder. The great rumbling creature screamed at him, and Harry screamed back. As he did, he felt the sudden bite of gravel underneath his hands and a great flood of light. He blinked desperately as his eyes re-adjusted to the brightness, the colours of his surroundings swirling into view, and became suddenly aware that the rumbling he had heard was no creature, but instead a great double decker bus hurtling towards him, its horn screeching at him to move. Harry threw himself backwards as the bus blew past him, missing him by mere inches.

“Damn, thought I had you there.” Came a decidedly demonic voice from the pavement just behind where he had miraculously managed to avert death by speeding bus. “You should really watch where you’re going.”

Scrambling to his feet Harry turned to face the veritable ghost of a man leaning against one of the many sticker endowed bike rails that lined the street behind him. “Are you trying to kill me?” He shouted indignantly.

“Yes.” The demon replied lazily. “That is rather the point.”

“I said I won’t sign your damn papers!”

The demon shot Harry a disparaging look. “I know, that’s why I’m trying to kill you. Do keep up, Potter.”

“I thought I needed to sign your paper first?” Harry replied, slowly.

“No, I said that getting you to sign the contract was the easiest way of going about things,” the demon said, picking at his neatly manicured nails distractedly. “Not the only way. You wouldn’t sign, so now you have to die. It was your choice, really.”

Harry growled. “No it bloody well wasn’t! None of this was my choice!”

“That’s not my problem.” He replied with a shrug. “My problem is making sure you get to Hell one way or another.”

Words dying on his tongue at that, Harry simply stalked away, as though somehow distance would stop the demon’s efforts. Instead he seemed to float up behind him like some deadly Cheshire cat, his smile decidedly smug. “Now, Potter, where do you think you’re going? That’s not the way to that dingy little office of yours.”

“No, I’m going home to change into something not covered in muck. I’ll probably have to throw this suit away, so thanks for that.”

“Oh, Hades forbid you have to get rid of that nasty polyester suit!” He replied with mocking horror. “However will you survive it? If I knew breaking you was that easy I would have simply burnt down your wardrobe!”

“Oh shut up, you prick!” Harry spun around to grab the bastard by his stupid cloak, but the demon just cackled and melted into smoke once more, leaving Harry stood on the pavement, furious, dirty, and terribly late for work.

When he finally stormed into the office half an hour later Hermione was hovering by his door, concern marring her features. “Harry, you’re half an hour late! I covered for you and said that you’d come in early so I’d sent you on an errand, but I’m not making a habit of it!”

Harry sighed and wilted into his cheap office chair. “Thanks, Hermione. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She shook her head and smiled warmly. “You’d be lost, I know.”

 

* * *

 

A few days passed with little excitement, it seemed as though the demon had given up on him, either that or his near-death by speeding bus had shocked him to his senses. The more Harry thought about it, the more it was simply logical that he was having some kind of episode. No one in the street that day had taken any notice of the demon, or even Harry’s near-accident, so it seemed that Harry was the only one to see him. Perhaps he was working too hard, perhaps he had an underlying mental health issue, or perhaps he really had had some sort of stroke. Regardless of exactly what had caused it, it seemed to Harry that the logical conclusion was that he had been hallucinating the strange man, and that if he reappeared Harry would simply have to see a doctor about it. After all, as scary a prospect as it was at twenty-seven, a stroke was infinitely more likely than an actual demon not only existing, but appearing to take his soul to the Devil himself.

As it turned out there was a certain comfort in knowing that you were slowly going mad. Madness was medical. Madness was treatable. Madness was a tangible fact of life that that had been a part of the human experience for millennia, and something that Harry found he wasn’t that afraid of. His work days were less stressful in that knowledge, and it was refreshing. For a short while at least.

“Hello again, Potter.” The demon’s voice said, drifting over to him from the corner of his office.

Harry pointedly ignored him. Engaging in hallucinations was not healthy, if he ignored him, he would eventually go away. If not he would make an appointment with the GP and then, with a handful of pills, he would go away.

“Don’t ignore me, you ingrate!” The demon spat.

Harry sighed and continued to painstakingly fill out a form in black biro that apparently was still required to be in physical, despite the fact that no one had used the fax machine in the staff room for a decade at least.

“Hades, this looks dull.” The demon continued. “Are you seriously having to put effort into concentrating on that?”

Harry could feel the demon peering over his shoulder, but he continued to ignore him as best he could.

“I suppose someone with as little cognitive ability as yourself would really _have_ to put in the effort to get even the most mundane of tasks finished.”

The room was quiet again, but for the gentle scratch of ballpoint on cheap paper. There was a gentle whoosh of air and the demon was suddenly sat on his desk, blocking Harry’s light enough that he was forced to put the pen down and look up.

“Can you please let me finish my work, or I’ll have to skip lunch again, which is undoubtedly making this whole thing worse.” He asked, as calmly as possible.

The demon raised a silvery brow. “Trying to be diplomatic, Potter?”

“Trying to do my job.”

“That makes two of us then.” He replied toothily. “Sadly there aren’t many ways to kill you in this dingy little room. There isn’t even an air conditioning unit to drop on your head and put you out of your bureaucratic misery.”

Harry sighed and moved the papers into better light. “You could strangle me with that ancient corded phone? Or perhaps drown me in the water cooler just outside? How about ramming enough pens down my throat that I choke to death, hmm?”

“Hells, Potter, you’re morbid today. I might not even need to try with you, sounds like you’ve thought about offing yourself in far more creative ways than I have. You could just sign the papers and then you wouldn’t even need to die.”

Putting the pen down again, Harry levelled the demon with an deadpan look. “ _I wouldn’t even need to die_ , how pleasant, I’ll just sit in eternal damnation instead, hooray.”

“I never said anything about damnation, just Hell.”

“Apparently I have a more vivid imagination than I thought. I should have been an artist. Aren’t lots of Schizophrenics artists?”

The demon paused. “Are you- Do you think this is all in your head?”

Harry cocked his head to the side slightly. “Well, you say you’re a demon, which is ridiculous, and no one else has seemed to notice you, despite you appearing to be able to fly, which is usually something people would notice on a busy street in London. So, logically, you must be a figment of my imagination. Though why my brain would concoct a posh, mouthy git to follow me around, I have no idea.”

The demon was silent for a moment, before looking Harry dead in the eyes and knocking the pot of pens off the edge of the desk. Harry frowned, but before he could open his mouth to speak the demon pushed the stack of papers off the desk as well, then he picked up the phone and dropped it dramatically next to the massacred stationary on the ugly scrub carpet.

“Could your imaginary demon concoction do that?” He asked triumphantly.

Harry raised a brow. “What? Knock things off my desk like an irritable cat? I suppose not, but then that could all be in my head too. All of this could be in my head. I could be catatonic in a hospital somewhere having been hit by a bus, stuck in this insane nightmare, who knows!”

The demon’s nostrils flared with annoyance. He leant over the desk purposefully and grabbed a fistful of Harry’s shirt, pulling him out of his chair. “This real enough for you, Potter?”

Harry’s huff of laughter disturbed a lock of the demon’s hair, white strands falling into his eyes, causing him to become even more incensed. Harry couldn’t help but laugh some more. He was sure that his colleagues would have him institutionalised before he could do it himself, but the dishevelled creature in front of him was almost too funny to bear.

“Don’t laugh at me!” He demanded, throwing Harry backwards into his chair again, smoke beginning to coil out from between his clenched teeth. “You’re insane, that’s for bloody sure, but not because I’m here. I was going to try and make it painless for you, Potter, but no one laughs at me and gets away with it. I’ll be seeing you.”

With that he evaporated into nothingness once more, leaving Harry still laughing to himself in the cold, artificial light of his cramped office space. Harry took this peaceful opportunity to finish his paperwork and make an appointment with his GP before heading out to fax his forms to whichever dinosaur had decided they were still using fax machines.

* * *

 

The demon made an appearance at least once a day after that, trying to trip him in the street, turning his gas on while he was asleep, or just lying across his desk becoming increasingly irate as Harry continued to ignore him. His doctor’s appointment was only a week away, and Harry was so looking forward to having his mind to himself again. His improved mood had actually given his work ethic a boost as well, and he found himself more productive with just the thought of being free of his pesky, posh poltergeist. He had even forgone his usually disparaging thoughts about his fax recipient when, as he turned the corner, he bumped into Hermione, dropping them all to the floor.

“Oh, Harry.” She said apologetically as she helped him gather up his fallen papers. She paused as she handed them to him in a neat stack, considering his face carefully. “You look happy today.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” She said with a gentle smile. “It’s nice. You’ve seemed so down lately, I was beginning to worry about you.”

Harry smiled back. “Yeah, I’ve been having some issues, but I’m getting it sorted, and I’ll be okay.”

Hermione’s burgeoning frown was concerned, but not pitying. “Oh, Harry, you know if you’re having problems you can always talk to me or Ron. We care about you. You don’t have to keep things from us, whether it’s health or relationships.”

It was Harry’s turn to frown. “Relationships?”

“Harry, really?” She admonished, parental disappointment in her tone. “I’m talking about the man who’s been visiting your office lately. He was there just this morning.”

Harry froze. “What man?”

“Thin, blonde, quite handsome if you like aristocratic types.” She said lightly. “You two seemed very … close.”

“You could see him?” He could feel the panic rising in his chest, wrapping its tendrils round his throat.

“Of course. Your office blinds were open.” She raised a brow. “Harry, are you alright?”

“Fine, just fine.” He replied, his voice no more than a squeak.

“Harry, if you were having some kind of office romance and happened to forget to close the blinds, I didn’t see anything untoward. I can’t say the same for anyone else, but you should really be more careful next time.”

“Next time?” Harry squawked. “Romance?”

“Not that it isn’t good that you’re moving on, and exploring new romantic avenues, so to speak.” She assured him. “But it’s sort of against policy, and not strictly legal.”

She considered his stricken expression sadly for a moment before taking his free hand in hers. “I’m happy for you, Harry, I just wish you’d talk to us about these things. I know we’re busy, but we really do care.”

Harry simply nodded mutely as Hermione squeezed his hand reassuringly before letting go and making her way back to her own office, leaving him standing dumbly in the middle of the corridor, faxes all but forgotten.

 

* * *

 

Harry stormed out of the office that lunchtime, equal parts furious and bewildered that his apparent hallucination wasn’t that much of a hallucination after all. Instead of parking himself on a bench in Russell Square like he might have done on any other given day, Harry simply kept walking, his mind spinning.

Okay, so he would perhaps have to cancel his doctor’s appointment, and come to terms with the fact that there really might be a demon after his soul, and he might have actually been in danger of dying this entire time, but had been too flippant to acknowledge it. While it was comforting to know that he wasn’t going insane, the panic that had wound its way around his chest, coiling itself through his ribs until he could barely breathe, was only tightening its grip as he stalked down the street.

Real demon. Right. Real demon that other people could see and was definitely not just his imagination. Real demon that was really trying to kill him.

Right.

As he passed a clothes shop that was playing obnoxiously loud music something in the next window gave him pause. He took a few slow steps backwards to the window of a shop he was fairly certain he had never known existed. In the display were several wooden and stone statues of grotesque leafy faces and naked women, draped in velvet and surrounded by melted candles, glinting crystals, and books on Wicca and modern day magic. Harry glanced up at the sign above the door, it read ‘ _Asteria_ ’ with a tagline below that said ‘ _one stop occult shop_ ’.

Harry wasn’t exactly certain it was serendipity, but it was a close thing. Pausing for just a second to gather his thoughts he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Predictably the shop smelled of incense, potent and pungent, something like patchouli and sage. All around the room were shelves of books and wicker baskets of trinkets and stones, circular mirrors, bundles of sticks and dried flowers, and a lot of candles. There was a young woman behind the counter, exceptionally pretty with a pierced nose and brightly coloured hair, reading a book during what must have been a lull in business. The bells above the door tinkled as it closed behind him and the girl looked up, shooting him a practiced customer-service smile.

“Hi, welcome to Asteria, is there anything I can help you with today?”

“Hi,” Harry began awkwardly. “Sorry if this sounds like a weird question, but do you have anything on demons?”

The girl frowned. “We don’t really deal with demonology and dark magic here.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to do any dark magic, I want to protect myself from it.”

Her face brightened considerably at this. “Oh, we can definitely help with that! Protection is my speciality.”

With that she abandoned her book entirely and hurried out from behind the counter, beckoning for Harry to follow her. She hummed quietly to herself as she picked up bits and pieces from the shelves and cradled them in the crook of her arm.

“Okay, so first of all I’m going to suggest you wear this pendant.” She said, handing him a sleek, black crystal on a faux-leather band. “It’s black tourmaline, great for repelling low-level negative energies throughout the day.”

Harry nodded along silently, traipsing after her as she flitted from shelf to shelf light an overzealous hummingbird.

“And you should keep this labradorite in your pocket at all times to shield yourself from psychic attacks.” She placed a small iridescent stone next to the pendant, then another shard of blue stone shaped like the first. “And it’ll work even better with this flourite to shield your aura so that the demon can’t find your energy signals.”

Harry looked at the small pile of rocks in his hand skeptically. “Uhuh.”

“Now, these are great to get you started, but if you’re having real demon trouble, you’re going to need to ward your house too. We don’t have any in stock at the moment, but there are certain minerals and herbs that are excellent protection against evil spirits and entities. I’ll make you a list!” She hopped back behind the counter and clicked her pen enthusiastically as she began to write something on the back of an open envelope. “You’ll want to put a line of this across your doorway and all the entryways into your home; windows, fireplaces, ventilation shafts, all of them.”

She chewed on the end of the pen thoughtfully before scribbling something else down and then passing him a long, green candle from the shelf behind her head. “This is to break a curse. Now, do you have a cauldron?” Harry shook his head and she shrugged. “Eh, a casserole dish will do if you have one of those.”

As Harry listened to the girl describing rituals and spells, and piling increasing numbers of supposedly magical items into his hands, he felt a growing sense of bewilderment. He left the shop with a canvas bag full of his occult items and a significant dent in his month’s budget, but as heavy as his pockets felt, his heart felt lighter. The rest of the work day passed without incident, and Harry rushed home at five, only stopping at the corner shop to pick up the last of his ritual ingredients.

Closing and locking the door behind him, Harry emptied the contents of his bags onto the coffee table unceremoniously and rifled through them, a feeling of triumph and glee washing over him as he lit the first candles. That demon was going to rue the day he messed with Harry Potter.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around for this chapter, I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far! I hope you'll enjoy this chapter too.  
> Chapter 3 might be a bit later than next Friday because of deadlines.
> 
>  
> 
> CW for this chapter: some violence and alcohol use/abuse (not major)

“You salted your doorway.”

Harry woke with a start, falling off the sofa where he had passed out surrounded by extinguished candles the night before. He looked up to see the demon, his skin and hair almost pearlescent in the early morning sunlight, stood by the window, looking down at the white granules resting there.

He raised a silvery brow. “Did you think that was going to keep me out?”

Harry felt a flush of shame and embarrassment. The salt was supposed to be purifying, so much so, the girl had said, that something impure couldn’t cross it. He’d made sure to line every entrance into the house he could find. Maybe he’d missed one, or maybe the girl was wrong.

The demon licked his finger and dipped it into the salt on the windowsill, completely unfazed, and popped it in his mouth. “Is that cumin? And basil, too? All you needed was a few chicken breasts and you’d have a half-decent meal.” He cackled with malicious delight.

_So salt was a myth_ , Harry deduced, feeling increasingly silly. One thing to check off the list at least. It seemed that the candle rituals hadn’t done much for his luck or protection either, otherwise he wouldn’t currently be dying of embarrassment.

The demon’s laughter was cut short as he sniffed the air and frowned. “Is that- did you smudge your house, too?” Harry mumbled something unintelligible and the demon sneered gleefully. “With sage? Oh, Potter, did you dance naked in the moonlight in a circle of magical gemstones chanting hippy new-age poetry? _‘Evil spirits and entities, leave me be! Negative energies, begone, begone!’_ ” His voice was mockingly high-pitched. “ _‘Go back from whence you came, foul creatures of the night! Only light and healing energy is allowed in this room! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’_ ”

His laughter was biting and cruel, and Harry was suddenly glad that he had left the crystals in his coat pocket. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a thick skin, he had lived through enough humiliation in his life to be able to take even the most pointed teasing, but something about this cut him deeper than Harry was willing to admit. He felt the anger and embarrassment flare up inside of him in a way he hadn’t done since he was a teenager and his cousin had found him kissing another boy behind the off-license. Dudley had taunted him mercilessly, calling him names that still rung in his head every time he looked at another man with anything more than friendly affection. He’d got very angry that night, his cousin had beaten him black and blue for it, but Harry had got a punch or two in himself. In fact, he’d punched Dudley square on the nose. In that moment Harry wanted nothing more than to punch the demon square on the nose too.

He hadn’t realised he’d even stood up until he felt the sickening crunch of cartilage and a flood of warmth bursting across his knuckles. The demon stepped back with a sputter, clutching his nose as slick black fluid slugged from between his fingers.

“You hit me!” He cried incredulously. “You bastard! No one hits me!”

Harry barked out a surprised laugh and immediately regretted it, clamping a hand over his mouth as the demon turned, his eyes fixed on him, their previous steel grey turned stormy and glowing eerily despite the late summer sun now flooding the room. Everything suddenly felt terribly cold as the demon began to seethe, as though he were sucking the very warmth from the room, fueling the terrible smoking flames that had begun to flicker around the edges of his silhouette like some kind of furious aura. Harry was suddenly very aware that the man in front of him wasn’t a man at all, but a being of death and destruction. A being he had just punched so hard he’d broken his nose.

_This is how I die._ Harry thought to himself, taking a step backwards. ‘ _spose there are worse ways to go than socking a demon in the face for being a git._

The demon seemed taller than he had done before, towering above Harry as he tripped and stumbled over discarded candles and a large cast-iron casserole dish still filled with the cremated remains of hastily scrawled protection spells and dried flowers. The demon’s face, still dripping with black blood, contorted into something significantly more malevolent, his eyes narrow slits of hate, his seething grin splitting his face wider and wider. Even his hands had elongated to veritable talons, and as he reached out towards him, Harry found it increasingly hard to breathe. As the demon stepped closer, Harry’s throat tightened, every step he took constricted more painfully.

“Do you think this is some kind of game?” The demon hissed.

Harry clawed at his throat, the only noises escaping desperate, raw croaks. His eyes were fixed on the demon, he wanted to look away but the rage that smouldered in his gaze was transfixing. The blood had begun to rush now, thudding in his ears, throbbing so loudly he couldn’t hear what the demon was saying. He wanted to be sick, he wanted to scream, he kicked and writhed as pinpricks of light danced constellations in his vision and he began to feel himself slip in and out of consciousness.

“Does it feel like a game to you now?”

Harry could feel the demon’s voice reverberating in his skull now, his lips unmoving, but the voice in his head deafeningly loud. He could feel himself fading, the demon’s face the single glowing beacon in the encroaching darkness.

Just as Harry was ready to let go, there was a sudden rush of air into his lungs and he gasped, coughing and dry heaving as his vision, still swimming with dark spots and spinning stars, began to return.

He looked up, but the demon was gone.

Shaking violently, Harry curled up in on himself. This was perhaps more serious than he’d first thought. The bus, the gas, the bathtub narcolepsy, that was all so different from the very real and very immediate threat he had just experienced. It seemed that New Age witchcraft wasn’t going to do anything to protect him, and he apparently couldn’t protect himself either, which meant Harry had some research to do.

 

* * *

 

It must have been strange to many people, Harry thought, that his local library was not only the country’s national library, but the largest national library in the world. The British Library was usually the kind of place reserved for students and academics. It was, ironically, a place not filled with those who needed to acquire knowledge so much as people who already had very specialist knowledge and simply required the physical evidence to back it up. Harry was, however, one of the casual readers. He was not studious or bookish particularly, but there was something about the old books and towering ceilings of the library that made him feel at peace. It was a form of escapism, he supposed, that he simply couldn’t find elsewhere. He had become a regular since Ginny left, choosing to spend his free time losing himself in books instead of drink or other people. Ginny hadn’t been the type of person to frequent the library either, he thought that was maybe one of the reasons they got on so well. She loved the outdoors, and when she left, suddenly the outdoors seemed to be her territory. He couldn’t seem to go anywhere without being reminded of her. Except the library. Usually his time there was spent in one of the larger reading rooms, squirrelled away in a corner with a book or two at most. Today, however, he was on a mission, stalking up to the humanities reading room, and over to the counter where an old man was sat, hunched over a collection of papers, peering through his horn-rimmed spectacles intently. Before Harry even reached the desk, however, the man raised a hand to stop him. Harry paused as the man finished what he was reading before looking up and smiling broadly.

“Harry, how good it is to see you. It’s been a few weeks, I thought maybe you might have left us for good.” He said seriously, though the sly glint in his eye betrayed his teasing.

“Hi, Albus.” Harry replied, his voice still croaky. Albus was a permanent feature in the library, he seemed to be at every desk in every reading room, regardless of where Harry chose to go. It was rude to ask, but Harry was certain the old man must have been over a century old, yet day in and day out he was hunched over papers, or leafing through stacks of books, and he always seemed to know the answer to every possible question, and the location of any and every book requested without a glance at the large yellowing computer screen. Harry cleared his throat. “Do you have anything on demonology?”

This gave the old man pause. He set the papers aside and raised a quizzical brow. “Now what, my dear boy, would you want with a book on demonology?”

“Does it really matter, Albus?” Harry replied desperately.

The librarian shrugged. “I suppose not. Follow me.”

With that the old man made his way - far more deftly than should have been possible for a man of his age - through the maze of stacks and shelves, first to the collection of one hundreds, through to the one thirties, then finally winding through to the one thirty three point fours. He picked out a number of books, considered them for a moment, then placed two back on the shelf carefully. He handed Harry the small pile of books to carry and continued on past the one hundreds entirely and into the two hundreds, through row upon row of philosophy and biblical writings to a smaller section on spiritual beings, angels and demons. Two books from that section were piled on top of Harry’s stack before Albus moved on, just shy of the three hundreds, Judaism, Classical religions, Islam, all piled on too, until Harry couldn’t see over the stack. He tottered blindly forward until he came to an abrupt stop and Albus addressed him directly.

“I think that will be enough to be getting on with, wouldn’t you say, Harry?”

Harry nodded, but realised that Albus probably couldn’t see, replied. “Uh, yeah, probably.”

“Well you know where to find me.” The old man said, still out of Harry’s view. When he put the tower of books down on the nearest desk, Albus was nowhere to be seen.

He sighed as he looked at the mountain in front of him. There were some modern books, their plastic protective layers gleaming in the fluorescent lights, but there were others too, older, bound in leather and cloth, the gilded writing too faded to read. He picked one of these from near the top of the pile and began to read. It was a book about demonology and the dangers of spiritualism written as fact, something Harry had always been doubtful had ever really been believed even in Medieval times. Yet here was a book from the late 19th century - written like an academic text - by a Reverend, on the people who deal with demons, how to spot them, and how to deal with them. Though the language was archaic, Harry devoured it, flipping through its strange descriptions of _corporeal sufferings and outward calamities_ , the physical and spiritual mischief wrought by these beings that he described as enemies of the truth.

Then, however, he picked up the book below that one, a more recent one on the Dead Sea Scrolls, that discussed the concept of God creating demons and angels to fight one another in a purely symbolic battle of light against dark. In fact, with every book that Harry opened, the more conflicting opinions he discovered, until he was more confused than he had been at the start. All he had wanted was a way to protect himself, but instead his head was filled with shedim and numen and jinn and asura, of goat-headed beings with faces on their stomachs and beautiful men whose visages were too shining to look upon.

He had thought it would be simple, but after several hours of wading through each religion, each century, and each shifting point of view, Harry slammed the large encyclopedia of Greek mythology shut just slightly louder than he had intended, drawing the irate gazes of several other readers. He murmured his apologies as he hastily placed the pile of books onto one of the returns trolleys and made his way out of the library.

 

* * *

 

Harry ended up at Ron and Hermione’s for dinner that Friday. Though he didn’t much feel like company, he didn’t dare ignore their invitation for a third week running. When he arrived at the door, sullen and twitchy, Hermione shot Ron a concerned look before bundling him inside and sitting him on the sofa with a large cup of tea.

While Ron was cooking Hermione sat down on the sofa next to him quietly for a while before speaking softly. “I’m afraid it’s all pies tonight, I hope you don’t mind. We’d planned shepherd’s pie, but Ronald got hold of some of that American pumpkin puree in a tin and insisted on making pumpkin pie as well.”

Harry knew very well that Ron hadn’t just happened upon pumpkin puree, Ginny must have brought it back the last time she visited, and they both knew it was Harry’s favourite. They were putting a lot of effort into it and Harry felt like dirt.

He turned to Hermione and smiled weakly. “That sounds great ‘Mione, really.”

She seemed relieved, if not totally convinced, but smiled warmly at him anyway. “Good.”

The living room fell silent again, the only sounds the clatter of trays and the warm whoosh of the oven opening and closing. Harry studied his hands intently, he had all but chewed his fingernails to the beds, yet somehow had managed to get dirt under them. He mumbled something about going to wash them, and retreated to the bathroom before Hermione could protest. He splashed his face with water, trying not to wince at how pale and waxy he looked. It was no wonder Hermione was worried, he looked half dead. He touched his bare throat gingerly, though there wasn’t a bruise in sight to betray the near-death experience he had survived only days before.

Dinner was awkward. Hermione was trying her best not to look concerned, and Ron was trying his best to pretend that he hadn’t noticed that Hermione was trying not to look concerned. They chatted amicably to one another about work and the weather, pointedly avoiding anything Ginny-related, occasionally shooting a question Harry’s way, which he replied to monosyllabically. The pies were good, but Harry didn’t have the stomach for them, poking at them ineffectually with his fork.

“Hey, mate,” Ron said, having polished off his second slice of pumpkin pie. “We were wondering if you wouldn’t mind helping us with some DIY? We’re thinking about doing up the spare room.”

Harry hummed noncommittally.

“Yeah, just needs a bit of paint, maye put some shelves up, a new light fixture. We’re thinking of turning it into a nursery, see?”

Harry stopped squashing his leftover pie into a pile on the edge of his plate and looked up. “Oh.”

“Not that we’re-” Hermione began, a little flustered. “We’ve just decided to try.”

“That’s great.” Harry replied weakly. He meant it, he did, but the sincerity didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Really, wow, you guys are going to make great parents.”

Ron laughed. “Yeah, ‘Mione will, not sure about me, I’m a bit of a lummox.”

Hermione shot him a fond, admonishing glance. “Ronald, even if you we were the worst parents in the world, your mother would undoubtedly make up for it. I swear she’ll never leave us alone.”

Ron paled a little at that. “Yeah, do you think we could keep it a secret until the baby eighteen?”

Hermione’s laughter was bright and for the first time that evening Harry found himself smiling genuinely. His best friends were trying for a baby while he was single, in a dead-end job, and being stalked by a homicidal demon. At least someone’s life was on track.

Both Hermione and Ron hugged him a little tighter than usual as they said their goodbyes, but rather than comforting, it brought back fresh memories of invisible fingers around his throat, constricting tighter and tighter until he found once again that he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need the demon to kill him, he was drowning all on his own.

 

* * *

 

Harry had managed to acquire a number of religious texts in the weeks following his last encounter with the demon. He had them stuffed into his satchel at all times, just in case he had a chance to read them on his breaks, or in case he needed to ward himself against evil in some way. Not that he had worked out if any of the prayers or rituals he’d encountered in their pages would help, since the demon appeared to be avoiding him.

Harry had seen him out of the corner of his eye, standing in the stairwell at his work, watching him from the street below his window, following him home in the dark, always the pale specter, but for some reason the demon hadn’t approached. Harry hadn’t been overtly threatened all week, and even the obscure accidents he kept having appeared half-hearted at best. It was a strange thought, but Harry couldn’t help wondering if he’d genuinely offended the creature somehow. That thought didn’t sit very well with him, and he couldn’t put his finger on why. Perhaps, more than anything, it was the fact that he had so easily lost his temper, and that it had barely registered that his actions had culminated in violence until it was already too late. Was that the kind of person he was? He had been hot-headed as a teenager sure enough, but he had never thought of himself as a violent person. Was this what Ginny had seen in him that had finally pushed their relationship over the edge?

He glanced at his phone for a moment, opening the contacts and scrolling down to see where Ginny’s name still sat - beneath George and above Hermione, because Harry was far too disorganised to have anyone’s surnames in his phone - but paused, finger hovering precariously before sighing and putting it down on the sofa next to him.

He and Ginny hadn’t spoken properly since they broke up, she had tried but it had been too raw for Harry to deal with. The break up had been coming, he had known it for a while, but for some reason it was still a shock when it finally happened. They hadn’t been living together, not officially, so there wasn’t much for Ginny to move out, which was both a blessing and a curse. He didn’t have to keep encountering her things around the house, but it also felt as though the last ten years had never happened at all. It all twisted him up inside, like something dark and bitter, snarling at even the slightest provocation.

“No salt on the doorway this time?” Came a voice to his left.

Harry flinched at the sudden intrusion of his self-destructive thoughts. He looked up to see the demon sat in his armchair again as though nothing at all unusual had happened the last time he had done so. Perhaps he had kept his distance because he was plotting something extremely nefarious, and this was just how he had come to announce it. Harry glanced down at his satchel, then back at the demon. He could try to grab one of the books, try a banishing ritual like in the movies, though there was no guarantee that the book he chose would have any effect at all. Or he could run, try and make to to the door before the demon decided to finally end him. Instead, Harry shrugged nonchalantly. “Used it on the chicken instead.”

To Harry’s surprise the demon smiled toothily at him. “Good, if you’d tried that shit again it would have been so pathetic I’d be embarrassed for you.”

Any other day and Harry might have fired back something snarky, but he honestly couldn’t find it in him to even bother commenting. For some reason this seemed to kill the demon’s playful mood. “What? No biting retort, Potter?”

Harry sighed. “I just wanted some peace and quiet this evening, actually.”

“Am I bothering you?”

“Immensely.”

“Wonderful.” The demon said, with more glee than he should have been allowed. “Thinking of offing yourself yet?”

Harry grumbled and got to his feet. “You’ll have to do a lot better than light teasing and bad impressions to get to me. My best mate has brothers whose pranks would put any demon to shame.”

“You think a couple of human boys could win a prank war with a demon?”

Harry felt a smug smile tug at his lips thinking about the one Christmas Fred and George rigged the toilet to erupt like a geyser every third time it was flushed. Or the time they slipped laxatives into their rival footie team’s sports drinks before a match. “You have no idea.”

The demon sniffed dismissively. “Good thing I’m not one for childish pranks. I’m trying to kill you, Potter, not accidentally dye your hair green.”

Harry paused, the memory of the demon’s prior house visit creeping back into his head. He clasped his shaking hands together, willing them to still. “If you were trying to kill me why didn’t you finish the job the other day? I was dying, you know, I could feel it.”

The demon was quiet for a moment, the cruel humour gone from his eyes. He looked tired and wan like Harry hadn’t seen him look before. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. I lost my temper.” Harry raised a brow and the demon gave him a wary glance before continuing. “You’re infuriating, and you punched me. I would have had every right to kill you right then and there, but that’s not how things work.”

“What things?”

The demon was quiet, and clearly exasperated, such a human expression Harry almost forgot that strange serpentine rage he had experienced the week before. It was like this man and the demon who had actually tried to kill him were two entirely separate entities.

“You know,” The demon began. “The idea that the Devil and his demons are evil and full of lies is painfully Judeo-Christian.” He said suddenly, ignoring Harry’s question entirely. “We are merely the speakers of truth. Lots of ‘ _pious_ ’ men don’t seem to like that for some reason.”

“You’re still a demon, though. You’re only sat in my living room right now because you’re trying to take my soul to Hell. You tried to kill me three times this week already, strangulation notwithstanding.”

The demon sighed, looking at him as though he were the foremost idiot in existence. “Firstly, I only actively tried to kill you twice, you tripped up the stairs of your own volition. Secondly, I did apologise for the strangulation.”

Harry frowned. “No you didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You admitted it was a mistake, you never apologised for it.”

The demon waved a hand at him dismissively. “That’s practically the same thing.”

“You can’t just nearly kill someone you say you’re supposed to be killing and then semi-apologise for it and expect me to believe that you’re not some kind of evil incarnate.” Harry said.

“You really do view the world in shades of black and white, don’t you?” The demon replied, looking at Harry disparagingly. “You know, it’s more complex than that.”

“How so?”

Leaning forward, the demon came to rest his elbows on his knees as though he were explaining something to a small child. “Each person is made of dark and light, right? No one person is entirely good or entirely bad. What makes you think any demon or deity should be any different? Almost every religion worldwide admits that either their deity created both good and evil, or that they themselves are made of both good and evil. Though, really, what is good and what is evil is relative, and an entirely social construct.”

Harry frowned, he was no philosopher, and not at all religious, and all of this talk of good and evil was blurring his previously nicely drawn lines a little too much for a Thursday evening. “I need a drink. If you insist on staying, do you want a beer?”

Wrinkling his nose, the demon gave Harry a disdainful look. “I’ll have a whisky, if you have it. Scotch, though, none of that grain shit from America.”

Harry raised a brow. “Of course, I’ll just crack open the twenty-five year single malt I have lying around shall I, sir?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” He replied nonchalantly, leaning back as Kreacher leapt onto his lap with more vigour than Harry thought he had left in him, curling up on the demon like he never would with Harry. Bastard cat.

“I think I have some Bells in the cupboard.” Harry called from the kitchen.

There was a groan. “Just bring me a damn beer. It had better not be some awful IPA, though.”

Harry placed an unopened bottle of Paulaner on the coffee table and took a sip of his own as he sat down. The demon raised a brow questioningly, but took the beer without comment. It took a moment for the reality of drinking beer with a murderous disciple of Satan to really sink in.

“Why are you sat in my armchair drinking beer?”

The demon put the bottle back on the coffee table and leant forward. “Because you didn’t have any decent whisky.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“You’ve been doing some research.” It wasn’t a question.

Harry looked at the religious texts spilling out of his messenger bag and sighed. “Yeah, the hippy Wicca magic didn’t work, so I had to try something else. What did you expect? That I’d just let you kill me without even trying to fight back?”

“I had hoped you’d make it that easy, but I suppose that was wishful thinking. I see now you are both too stupid and far too stubborn for that.”

Harry snorted into his beer. “Yeah, I guess that makes two of us.”

“You think I’m stupid?” The demon said, challenge in his tone.

“And stubborn.” He added, taking another sip.

Harry was half expecting the demon to lash out, for smoke to pour from his mouth as he slashed at his throat with a broken bottle of Dunkelbier. Instead the demon laughed. It wasn’t cruel or cold like his laughter had been before, there was a warmth to it, and it took Harry by surprise.

“Maybe I just needed a break from trying to keep up with your stubborn stupidity.” The demon said, finally. “Maybe I just wanted to preach the virtues of Satanism before I off you.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t need a lecture. Like you said, I’ve been doing my research.”

The warmth disappeared from his face. “You shouldn’t try any of that, you know.”

“Why should I trust anything you say?” Harry scoffed. “Of course you’d say ‘ _don’t try the demon vanquishing rituals_ ’, you don’t want to be vanquished.”

“Most of that stuff is bullshit,” The demon explained. “And the stuff that isn’t will get you into more trouble than you’re already in.”

“How could I possibly be in more trouble than a demon trying to murder me on a daily basis after someone else sold my soul to the literal Devil himself?”

“The Lord of Light is far from the worst thing out there, you know. You’d be surprised by the human capacity for cruelty.”

Harry’s laugh was short and bitter. “You think I don’t know about the cruelty of humanity? My parents are dead, my only living family are racists who made me live in a cupboard under the fucking stairs, my best friends married each other and I don’t think either of them understand how fucking lonely I am in this decrepit corpse of a house on my own, and I work in a job where I have to refuse little old women financial help because their husbands died without leaving them anything after a lifetime of being told they couldn’t have any money or property of their own. Maybe I should just let you kill me, Hell couldn’t possibly be that much more miserable than my current existence.”

The demon looked at him curiously before speaking again. “Was that- did you want some sort of pity party for that? ‘ _Boo hoo, my parents died in a car crash and my extended family sucks! I hate my job and my girlfriend dumped me! Old people have no money and that makes me sad!_ ’ Grow up, Potter. Everyone’s lives suck, that’s why they make deals with us. That isn’t cruelty, that’s unfortunate happenstance. You could change a lot of that you know, not the dead parents and shitty relatives, but the friends and the relationships and the career. But I don’t think you really care, I don’t think you really want it to change. All you want is to wallow in how pathetic your existence is because that’s easier than making any kind of meaningful changes in your life.”

“Oh piss off, demon!” Harry shot back, downing the rest of his beer and slamming it down on the coffee table. “For a moment there I thought that maybe you weren’t the worst creature I’d ever met, but here you go proving me wrong.”

“See what I mean about pious men and speaking truths?” The demon called after him as he stormed into the kitchen to grab another bottle from the pantry.

When he returned to the room, sour remarks sharp on his tongue, he found Kreacher was now the only occupant of the armchair, and the bottle of beer was stood, empty, on the table next to his own.

 

* * *

 

The demon resumed his irksome stalking routine after that, which was, much to Harry’s surprise, quite a relief. There was something familiar and infinitely more manageable about the snark and the petty accidents. The entire strangulation incident seemed almost forgotten, at least for the demon, but every time they traded insults, every time the demon made him momentarily blind while crossing the street, shoved the toaster into the washing up bowl, or tripped him down the stairs, Harry couldn’t help but picture the twisted image of the demon’s face as he was suffocating, the smoldering and truly demonic visage that he now knew was hidden beneath the surface of his pallid, aristocratic mask. It was a source of endless confusion for him that he had glimpsed the demon’s true power - acrid smoke and silver hellfire - the kind of power that could kill him in an instant, and yet he was still alive, and the demon had returned to his clumsy, easily avoidable assassination attempts.

The most plausible explanation was that the demon was toying with him, that this entire string of events was nothing more than an exercise in manipulation and torture. From Harry’s personal religious archive, and now many visits to the British Library’s collection of demonology books, he had deduced that one of the most common characteristics across religions and cultures was that demons were tricksters. There was every possibility that the demon wasn’t even really after his soul, that he had just lied and said that to scare him, but there was a feeling in Harry’s gut that told him there was something more.

“Sweet Mastema, Potter, don’t you have hobbies?”

Harry sighed and shut the copy of the Diamond Sutra he had been poring over. “Reading is a hobby, you ass.”

The demon, strangely resplendent in green crushed velvet robes, was leaning against the frame of his kitchen door looking at Harry with some disgust and pity as Kreacher, the traitor, wound his way through his legs. “Reading religious texts alone in your mouldy old house is a hobby like taking the Middleway around Birmingham is a holiday, Potter. It’s not.”

“Who are you to lecture me about hobbies? You seem to spend all your time pestering me.”

“I don’t spend every waking second here, it’s my job, I work a nine to five, I do get to go home.”

Harry glanced at the decrepit grandfather clock wheezing the minutes away in the corner of the room and raised a brow. “It’s 7pm on a Saturday.”

The demon sighed heavily in a way that Harry was certain was reserved just for highlighting Harry’s apparent ineptitudes. “If you think time works the same in all the dimensions you really are a lost cause. It’s not even 7pm on a Saturday everywhere on this one planet, do you seriously think where your tiny little star is in relation to your tiny little country really dictates the time across multiple realms?”

Harry hadn’t actually thought about it like that. When he told the demon as much he stopped short, clearing expecting to continue to fire off vague insults at one another for the rest of the evening. Instead the demon snapped his mouth shut and shook his head.

“Of course you didn’t Potter, that would require you have more than one brain cell still functioning.”

“So you admit I had more than one brain cell to begin with?”

The demon almost smiled at that.

Harry opened the Diamond Sutra again, but it was difficult to concentrate on the spiritual enlightenment of Shakyamuni when he knew the demon was watching him critically, plotting his next move like some kind of velvet-clad mantis. Putting the book down again, Harry leaned back, his eyes fixed on the cracked plaster ceiling, mapping the grubby ceiling rose and elaborate Edwardian cornices. “Were you telling the truth about killing me?”

“What sort of a question is that?”

“I just want to know if you’re really going to kill me, or whether this is just some sort of game to you.” Harry replied with a small shrug. “Demons lie.”

The answering sigh was different from the last, he sounded tired. “I told you before, we’re not the ones who lie, that’s all you.”

“All me?”

“You. Humans. _Plural_.” Harry looked over to the demon, who was now perched on the the armrest of the sofa, stroking the cat who had jumped onto the seat next to Harry, but pointedly as far from him it was possible to be on the same piece of furniture. “Demons aren’t infallible, but there is greater potential for evil growing in humans than you’ll ever find in us.”

“Somehow I find that difficult to believe.” Harry replied dryly. “For one, everything that’s coming out of your mouth right now could be a lie, so how can I take you at your word?”

“With trust issues like that, it’s no wonder you have no social life.”

Harry bristled at that, but the truth of it soured all the witty retorts on his tongue. So perhaps not everything the demon said was a lie, some of it was pointedly accurate, much to his chagrin. But even if he were telling the truth about the rest of it, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t all just manipulation for his own personal amusement. The demon had said that Satan wasn’t all that interested in him personally, perhaps he had been left to his own devices and this was just his sadistic way of driving Harry to insanity. There were, Harry had also discovered, demons and spirits across mythologies that sought to cause madness - Lyssa and the maniae, Poludnica, Shakpana, the encantado, Pauchi Kamuy - and perhaps this demon didn’t have a choice, perhaps insanity was his only real tool. If that were true, though, there were better ways to drive a person mad than just being a general nuisance.

“Did you choose this?” Harry said suddenly, his voice strangely loud in the emptiness of the living room.

The demon rolled his eyes. “I’m not discussing my job with you, Potter. This isn’t therapy, not that you don’t need it. I’m only here now because there aren’t many ways to kill you when you’re sat on the sofa reading about Buddhism.”

Harry regretted even asking. “You’re doing a pretty good job of boring me to death with recycled insults. There’s only so many times you can call me dull and antisocial before I expire.”

The demon bristled, hopping off the sofa, his green robes billowing dramatically, startling Kreacher as he did. “I didn’t choose this, Potter, what kind of masochist would choose to spend any time with you? This is punishment.”

“If you aren’t going to kill me, how about you piss off and stop bothering me then!” Harry snapped.

The demon’s lips curled into a snarl and he disappeared without another word.

Harry groaned and dropped his head back to stare at the ceiling again. The demon really knew how to get under his skin like no one he had ever met before. He was certain he hadn’t been an angry person before this. Then again, Harry had been certain about a great deal of things that had turned out to be painfully untrue.

The more he thought about it, the more he realised that perhaps the reason the demon riled him up so much was that he dared to say all the things that his friends were too afraid to say, and that Harry himself was too chicken to admit. Maybe the demon was right about everything, maybe he did consistently take the easy way out. Perhaps that was why he and Ginny hadn’t worked out in the end.

Ginny had been the easy option - his best mate’s sister - staying with the girl you dated when you were a teenager took the hassle out of getting to know anyone else, it meant you didn’t have to go through that soul-wrenching process of opening yourself up one childhood tragedy at a time until your entire being was raw and on display for anyone to tear to shreds. You could so easily settle into a life of mediocre comfort that way.

Of course, as much as Harry had been the one to take that easy option, Ginny wasn’t like that. She was fiery, ambitious, driven. She wanted more and, truthfully, Harry had always been holding her back. It was only a matter of time before she left him.

Harry picked his phone up from the table and opened un Ginny’s number pressing the call button almost instinctively. The number dialed, rung a few times, then clicked.

“Harry?”

Upon hearing sound of Ginny’s voice for the first time in nearly a year, Harry hung up, throwing the phone onto the armchair and curling up in on himself with a groan.

The easy way out.

 

* * *

 

Harry ignored Hermione and Ron’s calls and texts for the rest of the weekend, drowning his shame and embarrassment in the rest of the beer and the remnants of the bottle of Bells from the cupboard. He avoided Hermione at work as well, trying not to let her concerned glances get to him. They meant well, but he simply couldn’t deal with his friends’ pity.

He’d taken to picking up a few bottles of cheap wine on his way home from work and finishing them all in one sitting before passing out on the sofa. It was his attempt at keeping the demon away, sure enough, but it also dulled his mind, slurring his thoughts as much as his words so that he didn’t have to think about everything he felt guilty and ashamed about. He hadn’t tried to call Ginny again, but she had left several voicemail messages that Harry couldn’t bring himself to listen to. They sat there on his phone taunting him every time he switched it on.

Occasionally, just before Harry slipped into unconsciousness, he could feel the weight of another body settle down next him on the sofa, but he was out before he could work out whether it was the demon, or just Kreacher deciding that Harry was more acceptable a housemate when he was unconscious. Harry couldn’t say he disagreed.

“Oh wonderful,” Harry slurred one evening, when the sofa presence made an appearance earlier in the evening than usual. Sat next to him, looking paler and far more serious than Harry was used to seeing him, was the demon. His silvery hair wasn’t slicked back the way it usually was, rather it fell about his face in fine tresses. He looked, Harry thought to himself, as though he had just got out of the shower.

“My non-metaphorical personal demon is back!” Harry crowed with false cheer. “Don’t worry, I’m helping you along tonight!” He brandished the second almost-empty bottle of wine in the demon’s face. “You’ve driven me to drink!”

“Don’t be dramatic, it’s only been a couple of months.” The demon replied, pushing the bottle away with distaste. “That stuff is vile. I almost don’t want to let you kill yourself with that, simply because it’s just too sad for a man in his twenties to drink himself to death on Woolworth’s finest.”

“It’s Tesco’s finest, actually.” Harry replied indignantly, before pausing and frowning at the bottle in his hand. “Tesco Value’s finest.”

“You’re a disgrace.” The demon muttered with disgust. “I have no idea why anyone would trade anything for your soul, let alone the Lord of Light.”

Harry shrugged and took the last swig of the admittedly awful wine. “Why are you here then?”

The demon was quiet, and Harry found himself falling asleep for a moment before he replied.

“If I set fire to the curtains will you make it to the door in time not to die of smoke inhalation?” The demon’s voice was light and casual, but it lacked the warmth of his usual teasing barbs.

Making a non-committal noise, Harry covered his face with the crook of his elbow to try and calm the pulsing behind his eyes. “Probably not. The room is spinning and I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Right.” Came the reply.

Everything was quiet for a moment, and Harry wasn’t certain he hadn’t passed out for a few minutes again. Then he heard the gentle crackle of fire, and suddenly found himself distinctly more sober than he had been a moment before. He sat up groggily to see the curtains nearest the front door were indeed engulfed in flames, and the demon was, once again, nowhere to be seen.

“Shit.” He mumbled as he staggered into the kitchen to fill up a pan of water to throw desperately at the heavy, antique curtains. Instead of dousing the fire, the water merely fizzled, a cloud of steam joining the smoke that was rapidly filling the living room. He rushed back for another, then another, but when it became clear that the water was doing nothing more than aggravating the column of fire that was slowly painting the high plaster ceilings a deep, matte black, Harry retreated to the kitchen again. This time he passed the sink to fumble with the spiral cord of the disgustingly olive-green telephone on the wall and dialled 999, grateful for once that Sirius had decided to go for a model with buttons rather than a rotary dial. There were way too many nines for a rotary dial in a crisis.

The woman on the other end of the line asked for his emergency, and though he was struggling to remain conscious he managed to slur something about fire and rattle off his address as best he could. With that he ran back towards the growing inferno, hoping to reach the door before it became entirely impassable. As he reached it, he paused, suddenly very aware of a screeching coming from down the hall. He’d forgotten about Kreacher.

Shaking his head to clear it a little, Harry ran back to fin his terrified cat hissing viciously underneath the armchair. Harry scooped him up, ignoring the pain of his claws digging desperately into his arms. Harry hated the damn thing but he wouldn’t let him die out of stubbornness.

Bringing his jacket up to cover his face, Harry ran for the door, forcing it open and stumbling out onto the street. Barely singed, but coughing the smoke from his lungs, Harry stood outside watching the glow from inside his godfather’s house grow brighter by the second, the distant sound of sirens creeping closer as it did. Kreacher yowled and scratched at him until Harry finally let him go, sitting heavily on the curb as the cat scarpered into the darkness of a nearby alleyway. By the time the fire fighters had quenched the flames, he was cold, sober, and exhausted. Someone had draped a thin shock blanket over his shoulders, but it was doing little to ward against the violent shaking that was wracking his body. Harry suspected that had more to do with the wine than the brisk night air.

“Liar.”

Harry turned to see the demon sat next to him on the curb, cloak wrapped tightly around him.

“You set fire to my house.” Harry said numbly.

“I did warn you.”

Harry nodded. He had indeed warned him.

“You said you wouldn’t make it to the door in time.” The demon continued. “You lied.”

Harry sighed. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

They sat silently for a moment before the demon spoke again. “Did your bastard of a cat survive?”

Frowning, Harry turned to the demon, his face cold and alien in the intermittent blue lights of the fire engines. “Why do you care?”

The demon shrugged. “I liked the cat.”

Harry sighed and turned back to the scene in front of him. “He survived, though I’m not sure he was all that happy about it.” The demon laughed softly, and Harry found himself laughing as well. “I don’t know why I saved him. I hate the sod. I’ve been hoping he’d die for years now, but I’m oddly glad he’s alive.”

The two were quiet again for a long while, staring at the rubberneckers giving up their peeking to go back to their beds. The fire engines, too, turning back after a job well done. Harry turned to the demon to ask him something, only to find that he’d disappeared again, and he was on his own, staring at the wreck of his house in the twilight of the early morning.

 

* * *

 

The fire had destroyed about half of his living room, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. Ron and Hermione appeared at his door the next morning, aghast at the state of the place, and more aghast that he hadn’t contacted them the night before.

“You stupid man!” Hermione said, hugging him tightly. “How the hell did you set fire to your own damn house?”

Harry shrugged as she let go. “Would you believe me if I said ‘ _spontaneous combustion_ ’?”

The look Hermione levelled him with was severely unimpressed.

“What about if I told you that it was a demon who has been following me for a month and attempting to kill me so that he can finally take my soul to Satan.”

Ron laughed nervously. “Yeah, mate. What were you drinking last night? It wasn’t the leftover bottle of cider from when we tried to brew it in the airing cupboard last Christmas, was it? That’d probably be pretty hallucinogenic by now.”

Harry sighed. “Yeah, I’m sure that was it.”

With that, the three of them set about clearing the charred debris, and measuring the windows for new panes, frames, and curtains, and the burnt sections of the floor for new carpets. The sofas were salvageable, and the demon’s favoured armchair was suspiciously untouched, but several of the old portraits had gone up in flames in a spectacular fashion and even their frames were little more than crumbling, black husks. By the time seven bin bags were filled and phone calls to several soft furnishing suppliers were made, Harry was dead on his feet.

“Harry, mate, why don’t you come and stay at ours for a couple of days?” Ron said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Harry shook his head. He couldn’t bring the possibility of his demon bringing harm to either Ron or Hermione. “Nah, don’t worry, you have enough on your plate. It’s just the living room, nothing else is damaged.”

Ron looked at him seriously for a second before shrugging and clapping his shoulder a final time. “Sure thing, but you know you’re welcome any time. The spare bedroom isn’t going to be a nursery any time soon by the looks of things, so don’t worry.”

“Sorry about that, mate.” Harry said with a grimace.

Ron shrugged. “It’s alright. I think Hermione’s secretly relieved, she’s going for that Environmental Protection position, you know.”

“I know.”

“She’ll be fine being a working mum, I wouldn’t mind being a stay at home dad either, though. She just has a better chance at getting the job in the first place if she isn’t already, you know, visibly pregnant.”

Harry nodded. “She’ll smash it though. She’d smash it with the baby strapped to her front.”

Ron smiled dopily. “I know, she’s brilliant. I still don’t know why she’s with me, let alone agreeing to have kids with me.”

“Yeah, it baffles me daily.” Harry joked, nudging Ron in the ribs.

“Kid, Ronald. Singular!” Came a voice from outside. “I agreed to one!”

“So far!” Ron called back, smiling at Harry.

Hermione popped her head round the door. “You’re very funny.”

He kissed her on the cheek as she glared at him, mockingly affronted. “I know.”

For a moment Harry forgot about his singed house and the demon attempting to kill him on a regular basis. It must be nice to have life be as simple as joking about children. He’d met Hermione when she was working part-time to pay her way through university. She’d been doing environmental law, but had stuck around when she’d been offered a place on the legal counsel's team. She’d said it was to get some practical administrative experience before going into the job she really wanted, but Harry had a sneaking suspicion she had wanted to keep a closer eye on him after his break-up with Ginny. It was amicable enough, sure, but they’d been dating since they were teenagers, and it left him out on a limb, romantically and socially speaking.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us for the night?” Hermione asked, peeling off her thick, soot-stained gardening gloves and folding them into her bag.

“Nah, it’ll be okay. I have to wait and see if Kreacher turns up at some point or the neighbours will complain about him screaming all night again.”

She nodded and hugged him one last time. “You know where we are.”

Harry waved the two of them off before closing the door and turning back to his empty house. It still smelled of smoke, and so did he, so he trudged upstairs to run himself a bath. Apparently neither Sirius nor any of his previous family, had ever believed in showers, so the great, hulking clawfoot bath was the only way of cleaning himself. The taps squeaked and sputtered as he turned them on, the pipes clunking and groaning like arthritic bones as the hot water forced its way through them. The room filled up with steam and Harry peeled off his grubby clothes and poured some left over body wash into the churning water in the hope that it would create some semblance of a bubble bath. It was barely half full when he sunk into the water and closed his eyes, unable to wait a moment longer for the searing water to soothe the ache of a night of alcohol and anxiety, and a day of hard labour. The water had reached just above his navel when he felt a chill in the otherwise steamy air around him.

“Can I not take a sodding bath without you turning up?” He said, opening his eyes to see the demon, barely more than smoke himself, stood on the other side of the room.

“I needed to check that you hadn’t killed yourself yet.” He replied.

Harry shrugged. “I thought that was your job. What you want and all that.”

The demon shrugged. “Thought I’d give you a day to recuperate before I tried again.”

“How considerate of you,” Harry replied dryly. “Demon. My considerate demon. How bloody special.”

“I’m not your demon.” He sneered.

“Then what should I call you? What’s your name?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not my demon, okay, but you’re stood in my bathroom, and I’m sat naked in the bath in that very same bathroom.” Harry said. “I think I'm beyond just calling you ‘Demon’, or ‘You’, or ‘Prick’, so what’s your name?”

“You really want to know my name?” The demon said incredulously, drawing distracted doodles on the steamed up mirror.

“They do have names in Hell, right?” Harry said, sinking lower into the bath.

“Yes, we have names in Hell,” He snapped back. “I just don’t see why I should give you mine. Names have power, you know.”

“Do they?” Harry replied lazily. "So, you have my name, what power do you have over me?”

For some reason the demon’s cheeks flushed a pale pink, but before Harry could be bothered to ask about it, the demon spoke again.

“Malfoy.”

Harry paused. “Sorry?”

“My name, you dolt.” The demon spat, but there was no venom there. “Malfoy.”

“Well, Malfoy.” Harry said, closing his eyes. “As much as I enjoy our little meetings where you try to kill me and I have to buy a new suit, or a new house, I’m a little busy being naked in a bath, so until the next near-death experience?”

There was silence, but for the burble of running water. Then Malfoy spoke again from the thickening cloud of steam. “I could easily drown you.”

“You could have snapped my neck last night in the dark. You could have finished strangling me, or pushed me under that bus, or down the staircase, or properly set fire to the house. You’re a powerful demonic being who can appear and disappear at will, you burn from the inside when you’re angry, you could have killed me that very first day in my office and made it so that no one had ever known I’d even existed, but you don’t seem to be putting all that much effort into _actually_ killing me. It’s almost like you’re trying to get me to die accidentally, on my own, via my own stupidity, etcetera, etcetera.”

Silence stretched out through the damp air between them once again, and Harry thought for a moment he’d been talking to himself. Then there was a gentle whoosh of air, like a sigh.

“That’s another stipulation of the agreement.” Malfoy said at last.

“Is it?”

Malfoy was quiet, and when Harry opened his eyes again the demon was gone. He was almost disappointed.


End file.
